The Jihadists and the Ethnic Cleansing of the Christians in the Middle East

Michael L.

{Cross-posted at Vocal International.}

It is astounding that as Muslims drive Christians out of the Middle East, Christians beyond the region do not seem to much care.  The rise of political Islam, since the misnamed "Arab Spring" - hereafter referred to as the Arab Nightmare - has unleashed waves of violence, chaos, and cruelty the likes of which I have not seen since coming to political awareness.  Christian churches are being destroyed in the thousands, if not tens of thousands.  Christian girls are sometimes raped and subject to forced conversion.  Christian men are forced to their knees, dozens at a time, for the purpose of filming decapitation as a recruitment tool for savages to come join the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.

{Just how it is that watching videos of head-chopping could act as a positive recruitment tool for people all around the world remains an ethical mystery.}

Pope Francis was recently in the United States, but Francis, strangely enough, is not much of a friend of Middle Eastern Christianity.  Although he spoke eloquently concerning the European moral imperative to drown in immigrants, he breathed not a word concerning the heinous fate of Christians in the Muslim Middle East.

If you want to know what is going on with Middle Eastern Christians, or the Copts of Egypt, Raymond Ibrahim is the "go to" guy.  I have written about Mr. Ibrahim before:

One of the great tragedies and hypocrisies of the current moment is the Christian and western-left failure to speak out against the persecution of Christians throughout Muslim lands. Perhaps the foremost scholar addressing this horrendous violation of human rights is Raymond Ibrahim, the author of Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians.

In a recent piece Ibrahim outlines the Muslim persecution of Christians in July of this year alone.

Nigeria:  Dozens of Christian churches were attacked in the Muslim-majority northern regions of the nation, where Boko Haram is headquartered...

Boko Haram jihadis shot and killed 29 people in two Christian enclaves of northeast Nigeria.  Most people in Dille village ran but those who could not were gunned down and many homes were set ablaze.

Iraq:  The Islamic state blew up another Christian church under its authority, the Mother of Aid Church which had stood in central Mosul for thousands of years.  The blast also killed four children who were near the church at the time.  IS also transformed the St. Joseph Church, an ancient Chaldean church in Mosul, into a mosque.  Pictures of St. Joseph show that the dome has been painted black and the church has been stripped of all crosses and Christian symbols and images...

Egypt: Three church related attacks occurred.

Niger:  Approximately 70 Christian churches and an orphanage continue facing a lack of resources and difficult conditions in rebuilding six months after thousands of Muslims attacked and destroyed them in “revenge” for the offensive Muhammad cartoons published by the satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo—a secular magazine based in France that also habitually mocks Christianity.

Sudan: Two imprisoned Presbyterian pastors are on trial and facing a possible death sentence. Rev. Yat Michael and the Rev. Peter Yen Reith of the South Sudan Presbyterian Evangelical Church are being charged with espionage and blasphemy under the Republic of Sudan’s Islamic laws.  Other church leaders say that Christians are often targeted for their faith and that the government’s accusations are pretexts: “This is not ‘something new’ for our church.  Almost all pastors have gone to jail under the government of Sudan. We have been stoned and beaten. 

And on and on and on.  And, you can be sure, the above sampling hardly scratches the surface.

Middle Eastern Christianity is among the most persecuted minority groups in the world, today.  They are being killed, forced to convert, or driven from their homes by the very people that the western-left hailed as the enlightened, democratic proponents of the "Arab Spring."

The "Arab Spring", of course, turned into an Arab Nightmare with the result that throughout the entire Middle East untold numbers of Arabs and Muslims have been slaughtered in internecine fighting between any number of various Jihadi groups, both Sunni and Shia.  And, as we learn on the morning that I write, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has destroyed the ancient Arch of Triumph in Palmrya, the classical Roman city in Syria.

But, as is rarely noted, it is the Christians in the Middle East, due to the violent and hate-filled forces unleashed by the Arab Nightmare, who are paying the biggest price.  They are certainly paying the least noted price, that much is certain.  What we are witnessing in the Middle East is nothing less than the ethnic cleansing of Christians from the region.

The irony, of course, is that even as Jihadis drive Christians out of the area, or kill them, so the formerly Christian countries of western Europe, particularly Germany and Sweden, seem eager to transform the very nature of their societies in order to accommodate millions of Muslims migrating out of the Arab Nightmare.

Or will they bring it with them?

Political sands are shifting throughout the world, as the United States recedes and as Putin's Russia comes to the fore, but the consequences of the Arab Nightmare are in no way limited to the Middle East.  They are currently most strongly felt in Munich and Stockholm and, I am sure, Brussels.